Flickr photo courtesy of USS John C. StennisThe Friday Wrap is my weekly collection of news stories, posts, studies, and reports designed to help organizational communicators stay current on the trends and technology that affect their jobs. These may be items that flew under the radar while other stories grabbed big headlines. As always, I collect material from which I select Wrap stories (as well as stories to report on the For Immediate Release podcast) on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

Not a bad first day for Windows 10—Microsoft’s latest OS was installed on more than 14 million computers and tables the first day it was available. The company’s goal is 1 billion devices running Windows 10 within three years. Read more

Google begins the great Google+ uncoupling—Once upon a time, Google’s strategy called for Google+ to be the gateway to all Google services. That’s being undone now, with YouTube the first service to be separated from the company’s social hub (or whatever Google+ is). The announcement led many to proclaim the death of Google+, but we’ve heard that before. Not all marketing agencies are ready to abandon Google+. Read more

Facebook is the most-used tech product globally—With its 1.5 billion active monthly users, Facebook has emerged as the most used technology product in the world, used more even than Windows. Ad sales were more than $3.8 billion in the second quarter, and mobile ad revenue rose 62% to $2.9 billion. Read more

Google digs in its heels on right to be forgotten—When Google accommodates a request for a link to be removed under the (completely absurd) European “right to be forgotten” law, it removes the link only from its European domains. The company has rejected a demand from France’s data commissioner that the links be removed globally. “We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access,” the company’s global privacy counsel wrote. Read more

Mozilla CEO rips Microsoft for Windows 10 default—Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has posted an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella complaining that upgrading to Windows 10 makes Microsoft’s new Edge browser the default browser. (Mozilla is the company behind the Firefox browser.) While users can change defaults to anything they like, it takes more work, Beard says, is “confusing, hard to navigate, and easy to get lost.” The letter threatens anti-trust action. Read more

Court orders Facebook to let Germans use fake names—Droves of artists with stage names abandoned Facebook for Ello because of Facebook’s policy of requiring people to use their real names. If they want to return to Facebook, they should consider moving to Germany, where the Hamburg data protection authority ruled that the social network cannot force Germans to use their real names. Read more

You asked, LinkedIn delivered—LinkedIn users may love the service, but they’re less pleased with the volume of email they get from the service. “We get it,” according to the company’s senior director of product management, who announced the business-focused social network is reducing the number of emails users receive by 40%. For example, instead of an email every time someone wants to connect with you, you’ll receive a weekly digest of requests. The digest format will also be applied to notifications of posts to groups. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

Yahoo unveils video app that uses text instead of audio—Yahoo Livetext, released Wednesday, lets you stream video one-to-one (think Apple FaceTime or Facebook Video Chat), but users text rather than talk, with words appearing atop the live video. The idea is for video to enhance texting, with a facial expression, for instance, replacing the need to add an emoji to express how something makes you feel. Read more

Google Glass is back—The company is being very quiet about it, but a revised Google Glass headset is being distributed for enterprise use in healthcare, manufacturing, and energy markets. I’ve always said that wearables will get their biggest boost in the enterprise. Read more

Google Search app helps you avoid crowds—Google will display the busiest times at millions places on Google Search in an effort to help you avoid going when the lines are longest. Read more

Trends

The internet mob is out of control—You may be as appalled at the shooting of Cecil the lion as I am—I never understood the appeal of killing an animal for fun—but the reaction of the internet is one more example of a mob behaving like a mob. No charges have been filed, no trial has been held, but the net has deemed it appropriate to ruin his life, just as they have women game developers in the Gamergate movement, Justine Sacco who did nothing more than fail to make clear that her tweet was meant to be social satire, and scores of others. “The more this behavior is normalized, the more likely it is to be deployed against targets who might not necessarily deserve to have their lives destroyed—including, perhaps one day, against you.” Read more

Podcast ads test ethical boundaries—As podcasting continues to grow, advertisers are paying higher CPMs than for virtually any other medium. One of the reasons they’re willing to pay that much is the host of the podcast—highly credible with his or her audience—is talking about the sponsor rather than playing a recorded clip. The challenge for podcasters is to be clear in separating the ads from the show’s contents. Read more

Lenovo’s internal social network really is social—Lenovo Social Champions wasn’t introduced as a collaboration tool to improve productivity. The idea was to boost engagement and advocacy. Employees have embraced it. The network, which mimics Facebook to an extent, allows employees to post stories and content that colleagues can share on external social networks or re-share inside the network. Gamification is component, with a leaderboard listing the most engaged and involved employees. Read more

Vine just isn’t what it used to be—Twitter’s six-second video tool used to be for you and me to share content with each other. It’s no longer “the Instagram of video,” having morphed into an entertainment property with Vine producers cranking out remarkable videos to be viewed by thousands of people, often paid for by brands. Read more

Infographics drive SEO—With Google’s search algorithm targeting guest blogging, once an effective way to build inbound links, infographics could replace the practice. Experts note than infographic search volumes have increased considerably—by 800% in about two years, according to content marketing influencer Jeff Bullas. Read more

Industry will drive Internet of Things growth—I noted earlier that I always figured business would embrace wearables before they became standard among consumers. The same is most likely true of the Internet of Things, where automation is already taken for granted. A white paper from American Industrial Systems anticipates worldwide industrial Internet spending could reach $500 billion by the end of the decade. A McKinsey report adds that the Internet of Things is being undersold; it will produce an economic impact of $4-$11 trillion by 2025, or about 11% of the global economy. Read more

LinkedIn’s dominance—LinkedIn—which reported earnings this week that so surpassed expectations that it surprised analysts—grew to 380 million users in the second quarter, making it bigger than Twitter; it has outgrown twitter and is close to Instagram’s audience size. For marketers, writes SHIFT’s Christopher S. Penn, “If you’ve had display ads—either in LinkeIn’s ad platform or via an ad network/exchange—expect them to continue to decline in effectiveness and increase in cost” as more players make it harder to reach LinkedIn’s audience. Publishing content for organic reach is still a smart play. Read more

The fastest growing social network is…—Did you say, “Snapchat?” With 200 million monthly active users, 100 million daily active users, and more than 400 million snaps per day (compared to Twitter’s 50 million daily tweets), Snapchat claims the title of fastest growing social network. Last year, the service grew 57%. Read more

The next set of emoji may deal with food allergies—The Unicode Consortium has received a proposal for emoji that would let people show quickly what they’re allergic to. Emoji images for peanuts, sesame, and other foods to which a lot of people are allergic would be included. Read more

One guy quit his job to Periscope for a living—Shortly after Periscope launched, New York Magazine profiled the first Periscope star, not unlike a YouTube star. Now there’s Jon Jacques, who worked for a New York-based video marketing company but who quit his job in an effort to make money from the live mobile video streaming app—not just for himself, but to help people in need. Read more

Should reporters write press releases, or is that a violation of “church and state”?—A news startup’s publisher has made the case that it’s a great way to generate revenue, but others are nonplussed by the idea. Read more

Research

People who don’t go online will continue to not go online—The migration of Americans to the internet surged for the first 13 years of the century to 84%—and basically stagnated there. The 15% of people who don’t use the net is largely unchanged over the last couple years. The reasons those people stay offline: cost, a perceived irrelevance of content, and physical ability to use internet-connected devices. Those not connected are also disproportionately black or Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Center. Read more

We use social media apps first—The first app people use each day is a social media app, according to a report from Opera Mediaworks. As for the last app of the day, they tend to be entertainment apps. News and information apps have the most user loyalty with the most consistent first and last app of the day usage, the report found. Read more

What do Millennials want from employee communications?—Millennials want instant, easy-to-access communication and content, but employers aren’t keeping up, continuing to focus on legacy systems like intranets that don’t accommodate Millennials’ mobile preferences. While 89% of companies still rely on internal email, 30% of respondents ignore email from their companies. Read more

Journalists rely more on social media—A new study finds that journalists around the world rely on social media to improve their productivity and better communicate with PR practitioners. More than half of journalists surveyed in the US, UK, Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Australia say they couldn’t do their jobs without social media; nearly 60% agree that it has improved their productivity. In the U.S. journalists list PR contacts as their second most important source for information, with 33% preferring social media for connecting with them. (Email still wins with 84%.) Read more

Millennials, shmellennials. Are you ready for Generation Z?—Generation Z—the generation that comes after Millennials—will account for more than 20% of the workforce in five years. Who are they and what are their expectations? To begin with 77% expect to work harder than previous generations in order to be fulfilled, but 30% say they would take a 10-20% pay cut to work for a cause about which they care deeply, according to a report from staffing company Robert Half International. Read more

Brands pull marketing in-house—The number of brands that don’t work with outside marketing agencies has grown 13% in the past year, with 27% of brands now handling all their marketing in-house. The reasons: Agencies are slow, they’re not shifting from traditional advertising to embrace new channels and formats, they’re campaign-focused whereas continuity has become more important, outsourcing customer relationships is less appealing, companies want to own the data rather than cede it to agencies, and agencies aren’t attracting the best digital talent. Read more

White papers deliver the most leads—If you’re trying to decide what kind of content you need more of to bolster the quality of your B2B lead-generation efforts, consider white papers. According to a report from the CMO Council and the NetLine Corporation, more survey respondents said the best leads came from white papers, followed by videos, analyst reports, and webcasts. Oddly, they spend most of their time creating product brochures, followed by slide presentations. White papers and videos took third and fourth place. Read more